Taste of Desperation makes Virginia debut

Art Noir Taste of Desperation first public showing in VA!

As the curtain slowly rises on Saturday February 1 at the Fall Church Artspace, Taste of Desperation makes its State of Virginia debut.
This black & white feature length art noir caper produced by independent film company Absurd Productions Pictures (APP) features such film noir staples as the femme fatale, gloomy jazz score, alluring mistress, snickering psychotic villains, and actual 1950’s B-movie actor Conrad Brooks.

Taste of Desperation won 1st place in the Crime Drama Feature category at the 2010 Indie Gathering Film Festival and has aired repeatedly at Film Festivals and art galleries in NY, DC, and OH since 2008. Mark Byrne, Writer/Director of Taste of Desperation, said the film not airing in VA up to this point was not by design.

“The film was set and shot in DC,” Byrne said. “So it just sort of made sense for that to be the screening place in the DMV area. Most of the cast lived in DC. But then along came this exciting opportunity to finally air the film in my home state of Virginia and adopted home town of Falls Church.”

A black and white film, particularly one filled with 40’s era dialog and costumes, would seem to be a hard sell in an independent market focusing almost exclusively on horror and romantic comedy/dramas.

“I’d always wished a modern film would harken back to Film Noir era look, storyline, ambient sound, snappy dialect, like Chinatown and the 70’s noir remakes did – but in black and white,” Byrne said. “It was fun to have to follow some rules, not only in dialog but in little things like the muted violence and a lack of the cursing that is such a staple of today’s crime film. Living by bygone restrictions was a challenge, but not doing so would be an injustice to the genre. Besides the best part of noir, outside of the dialog, is framing scenes in total darkness or shooting characters in shadows offset by a bright window streaming light behind them. And since film noir officially ended in 1958, I decided to start my own genre- art noir.”

This wouldn’t be the only time APP created a genre. The company’s most recent film from 2013, Small Fish Small Pond, tied in to other alcohol-induced stories dating back to 1945 Academy Award winner The Lost Weekend as drinking dramas. With an on-going effort to not tie to one idea or genre, APP short films have also visited mystery, horror, and dark comedy genres. But if one genre deserves a re-visit, it would be noir.

“I’ve thought about it, another film noir,” Byrne said. “There’s a cult following to noir, just like horror and sci fi, but less mainstream. I think that’s why there’s still an interest in this film through the years. And being artfully shot and conceived, noir always plays well to the art crowd. Taste of Desperation has been more successful screening at art galleries than film festivals, I think, because that crowd is more intuitive to noir’s artistic elements. They appreciate and accept the genre’s pacing and structure.”

So embrace the art noir atmosphere and “taste the desperation” at Artspace as the lure of the buck and the desire to stay alive walk a tightrope wire.